Traffic management is important in digital networks. Traffic management involves the controlling and scheduling of traffic through paths established through a network. The traffic can include audio, video, or any form of digital information. The individual streaming of television channels on a network typically requires the involvement of a multicast router because there is an inability to control multicast streams at lower layers in an Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. For example, the provision of multicast video services over an Ethernet broadband network requires the use of a multicast router to enable control of multicast streams of television channels.
According to one previously known technique, Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) enabled multicast switches are designed to “snoop” IGMP membership reports and “leaves” based upon queries from an upstream, multicast router. However, current router-based multicast services are adversely affected by complex multicast routing protocols and the processing overload experienced by routers due to thousands of channel changes occurring downstream.
Additionally, such previously known technique uses expensive routers that are specialized for use in implementing multicast control. Furthermore, this technique uses complex Internet Protocol (IP) address and router protocol design. Even more, there exists a performance degradation due to video service subscriber increases.
Also according to previous known techniques, presently available Ethernet gear can be configured to enable the sending of one multicast stream of digital information from a server to multiple endpoints. However, problems arise with such previously known technique when trying to stream more than one multicast stream on the same network. IGMP snooping was previously designed in order to solve this basic problem. However, difficulties are encountered when attempting to deliver 100 channels of video to 1,000 different subscribers over an Ethernet network using presently available off-the-shelf gear. More particularly, such a solution still requires the use of a Layer-3 router configured to run IGMP. There presently exists several routers that are commercially available that are capable of such configuration. However, such routers are presently very expensive, particularly when such a router is provided for solely implementing present tasks. Secondly, channel-change latency becomes a problem as the number of channels, hosts, and “hops” is increased between the router and an end user. Finally, Layer-2 devices are typically not designed to respond quickly in response to a topology change. As a result, there can be a loss of service to the customer.